The age of the paperless office has arrived, but it doesn't seem to be the boon to business it was once believed to be. Instead of wallowing in mounds of paper, businesses are inundated with digital content, from e-mail and faxes to video, voice, music, photographs, and more. To further complicate matters, there are many sources of information -- such as business processes, various applications, and multiple intranet sites -- all of which provide information in varying formats.

The control and management of all this content is a pressing issue for businesses. Much of this information is critical to operating the business and maintaining relationships with customers and business partners. As the amount of information increases, it becomes more challenging to find and retrieve up-to-date information.

In this series, the IBM Software Group Horizontal Integration Analysis Team takes you through the steps involved in managing content in an employee workplace. An employee workplace is a business-to-employee (B2E) application that provides a "virtual workplace environment." It integrates corporate information, employee directory function, and collaborative capabilities with access to administrative and business applications. In addition, document sharing, document management, and workplace content management capabilities are provided. These capabilities include support for the full content life cycle, from creation through review and approval, to a period of retention, and ultimately to destruction of the content. This series focuses on the content management capabilities of an employee workplace.

Link to project implementation.